Sporting CP

Also written as Sporting.

The club

Sporting Clube de Portugal were founded on 1 July 1906 in Lisbon, with origins tracing back to June 1902, and their founders included José Alvalade and the Viscount of Alvalade. They are nicknamed the Leões, the Lions, and the Verde e Brancos, the Green and Whites, and the club motto is "Effort, Dedication, Devotion and Glory". The feed name "Sporting" invites confusion, so to be clear: this is NOT Sporting Gijón of Spain, NOT Sporting Kansas City of Major League Soccer, NOT Sporting Cristal of Peru, and NOT their Portuguese rivals Sporting Clube de Braga, who usually appear simply as Braga. This is the Lisbon club often called Sporting Lisbon abroad.

The ground is the Estádio José Alvalade, built in 2003 on the site of the previous stadium that had stood since 1956, with a capacity of 52,707. Average home league attendance in 2024-25 was 42,529. The club's academy produced footballers such as Luís Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo.

The head coach is Rui Borges, appointed on 26 December 2024. He followed the interim João Pereira, who held the post from 11 November to 25 December 2024 after Ruben Amorim left for Manchester United on 11 November 2024.

Recent seasons

Under Ruben Amorim, Sporting won the 2023-24 Primeira Liga with 90 points from 29 wins, 3 draws and 2 defeats, 96 goals scored and 29 conceded, and a perfect home league record of seventeen wins from seventeen, a first in the club's history. In 2024-25 they retained the title with 82 points from 25 wins, 7 draws and 2 defeats, 88 scored and 27 conceded, and added the Taça de Portugal for the club's first domestic double since 2001-02, going unbeaten through seven cup matches. Viktor Gyökeres scored 39 league goals and 54 in all competitions that season before being sold to Arsenal on 26 July 2025 for a fee reported at 65,800,000 euros.

In 2025-26 Sporting finished second with 82 points, again from 25 wins, 7 draws and 2 defeats, scoring 89 and conceding 24, six points behind champions Porto, who took 88. The Colombian forward Luis Suárez, born in 1997 and not the Uruguayan of the same name, was the league's top scorer with 28 goals, 38 in all competitions. The season ended painfully: Sporting lost the Taça de Portugal final 2-1 after extra time to SCU Torreense on 24 May 2026, Kévin Zohi opening the scoring in the fourth minute and Pedro Gonçalves replying for Sporting. They had also lost the Supertaça on 31 July 2025 and went out of the Taça da Liga at the semi-final stage.

Honours and landmarks

Sporting have won the Primeira Liga 21 times, most recently in 2020-21, 2023-24 and 2024-25, the Taça de Portugal 18 times, the Taça da Liga 4 times and the Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira 9 times. Their one European trophy is the 1963-64 European Cup Winners' Cup, which remains the only UEFA Cup Winners' Cup won by any Portuguese club. The 2001-02 season had been the club's previous double before 2024-25 repeated it.

Notable scorelines

The 16-1 home win over APOEL of Cyprus in the 1963-64 Cup Winners' Cup, part of an 18-1 aggregate completed by a 2-0 away win, is described as the biggest club win in UEFA competitions. In the 2025-26 Champions League round of sixteen Sporting lost the first leg 3-0 away to Bodø/Glimt on 10 March 2026 and won the return 5-0 at the Estádio José Alvalade on 17 March to go through 5-3 on aggregate. In November 2024 Sporting beat Manchester City 4-1 in the Champions League league phase; the fixture appears in the 2024-25 season record, though the scorer details were not established from the sources read here. The club's all-time domestic record win and record defeat were not established from the sources read here.

European record

Sporting won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1963-64, drawing the final 3-3 with MTK Budapest and winning the replay 1-0. Forty-one years later they reached the 2004-05 UEFA Cup final and lost it 3-1 to CSKA Moscow in their own Estádio José Alvalade. Through April 2026 the club had played 390 European matches, winning 161, drawing 89 and losing 140, scoring 612 goals and conceding 508.

In the Champions League Sporting had for decades never gone beyond the round of sixteen, their best group-stage campaigns being second place in 2008-09 and third in 2006-07, 2014-15, 2017-18 and 2022-23. That changed in 2024-25, when they reached the knockout phase play-offs from the league phase with 3 wins, 3 draws and 4 defeats, and above all in 2025-26, when they finished seventh of 36 in the league phase, overturned a 3-0 first-leg deficit against Bodø/Glimt with a 5-0 home win in the round of sixteen, and went out of the quarter-finals 3-2 on aggregate to Arsenal in April 2026 — the deepest Champions League run in the club's history. Bayern Munich went on to win that Champions League, beating Paris Saint-Germain on penalties in Budapest.

Quotes

No directly quoted material was confirmed from the sources read here.

Right now (2026-27)

Rui Borges remains head coach. The headline summer signing was Rodrigo Zalazar from Braga, agreed on 15 May 2026 for a reported 30,000,000 euros.

Sporting are unbeaten in the Primeira Liga after five rounds, second in the table with 13 points from 4 wins and a draw. They drew 2-2 away to Estrela da Amadora on 8 August 2026, Zalazar and Fotis Ioannidis scoring, then beat Vitória de Guimarães 3-2 at home on 14 August with goals from Pedro Gonçalves, Ioannidis and Marc Altimira, beat Alverca 3-1 at home on 22 August, won 4-0 away at Rio Ave on 28 August with two from Luis Suárez plus Gonçalves and Geny Catamo, and beat Nacional 2-0 at home on 5 September, a Suárez penalty and another Gonçalves goal.

As Primeira Liga runners-up Sporting are in the 2026-27 Champions League league phase, whose draw was scheduled for 27 August 2026; their league-phase fixtures had not been played as of the sources read here. Whether Sporting contested the 2026 Supertaça was not established from the sources read here.

Sources

Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.